Greetings from Smoke City, USA! Summer has been preemptively cut short by pervasive wildfire smoke reddening the sun, blotting out the sky and the mountains, and forcing everyone to stay indoors. It’s basically hot winter out here. On the bright side, Missoula’s air quality has just been upped from “hazardous” to “very unhealthy,” so there’s that, and I do have a few pieces of good news to share, so the world keeps on turning.

First off, my poem from the most recent issue of Crazyhorse was featured on Verse Daily the other day, which means you can read it even if you haven’t had a chance to check out the crazygood Crazyhorse issue itself. Note: there is a typo on the Verse Daily page. What says “black dad” in the third line should say “black-clad.” Read it here!

Next, more poems from my YesYes Books chapbook, Inside My Electric City, which is due out in September 2016, were published last month in Phantom, and you can read them here. I was also pretty obsessed with this poem by Laura Creste, so read that one too. (I mean, really, you should just go ahead and read the whole issue.)

I’ve also got a poem that’s partially inspired by my yearly attempt and utter failure to sustain plant life (but also loss, making things, etc.) in the current issue of Fugue, the entirety of which you can read online here.

Two short poems were published in the current issue of Bat City Review, but it looks like they’re redoing their website, so I’ll hold off on linking that for the moment. In the meantime, here’s a weird picture of me reading the issue at a diner in Minneapolis! (Posed? Certainly not…that’s definitely how I read things…) There’s some glittery dialogue going on between the cover and the booth-sparkle.

I’m also happy to report that Willow Springs published two poems, “Chain,” and “Year of Coming Close” in their Fall 2015 issue, and while you’ll have to get your hands on a print copy to read them, you CAN read a few Ed Skoog and Devin Becker poems as an issue appe-teaser online.

Last but not least, the folks over at NightBlockwere kind enough to select and publish a poem called “Not Penelope, Although Unraveling” in their current issue, and I’m hanging out in there with some other YesYes Books authors like Emily O’Neill and jamie mortara! This journal can be digested in a sitting, but will keep your poem-brain fueled for a good long while after you get up.

While I still have yet to make the 40 minute drive to Garnet, the most nearby Montanan ghost town, I can happily report that I have two poems in the current issue of Ghost Town! OK, alright- cheesy intro, but give me a break; actual winter (not that 50 degree weirdness we had for a few weeks) has returned to Missoula, and I’ve been consuming Netflix episodes of Friends so voraciously you’d think I didn’t have any of my own. If you’ve only got 20 minutes, I’d definitely recommend dipping into this issue over continuing mindlessly to relive 1995. Joan Naviyuk Kane‘s three knockouts are enough to make February seem bearable, and these poems from Brandon Rushton and Laura Kasischke could also help one temporarily forget the swirling vortex of existential malaise outside the plastic-wrapped windows. What are you waiting for? Go forth and warm thy cockles, or whatever. (What’s a cockle, again? Some kind of bivalve, I think. I guess they should be heated before consumption.) Don’t worry– the mid 90’s will be waiting for you when you’re done.